In China this past spring, half of the taxi drivers wanted to talk to me about why the US was in a particularly bad position to pressure China in a trade war; the other half wanted my earnest opinion over how their country was developing compared to the US.

I hailed a cab from Lycabettus Hill, a popular place to watch the sunset in Athens, and was picked up by Ilias, an Athens native with long steel wool hair pulled into an unwieldy ponytail. He didn’t want to use his last name so he could speak freely.

I asked him what I always ask: Has the city changed in recent years? It’s an innocuous question that usually gets a revealing response.

ShutterstockUnemployment in Greece has dropped from a record high of 28%, but many Greeks are still feeling the squeeze of recovery.

In the case of Athens, I had expected something optimistic. The country has suffered an unparalleled economic disaster for most of the last decade. But the most recent reports have painted a brightening picture.

Unemployment has dropped from a record high of 28%. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and European officials have talked up the country’s recovery.

“Greece is a different country today,” Mario Centeno, president of the Eurogroup, told a conference in June. “Greece has the conditions to take into its own hands the process of its economic and social development, within the euro framework, and can always count on European solidarity if it sticks to the path of internal responsibility.”

This local told a very different story

Try telling that to Ilias.

“Every year, it goes from evil to worse,” Ilias said, as he translated himself through an iPad open to Google Translate on his dashboard. “Every year is worse than the last.”

The so-called recovery hasn’t reached most regular people, he said, and all Greeks have to show for austerity and the bailout is the loss of their country.

“The bailout has been very good for Europe. Nothing in Greece is owned by the Greeks anymore,” he said, calling out industry after industry that has been been privatised and sold off to corporations from other countries.

European officials and the Greek government have said repeatedly over the years that such privatization efforts are critical to successfully getting the country out from under its overwhelming debt.

But, to Ilias, such efforts have shown him that the government is not for the Greeks, but for the country’s international creditors. He pointed to the country’s escalating electricity costs, saying that the average electricity bill for his family is $US462 a month. If he wants to run air conditioning for a few hours a day, it could go up to $US752.

“No one can afford it,” he said.

The European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy said in a report from May that Greece has the second-most expensive wholesale electricity in Europe. But that hardly tells the whole story.

“In order to live with dignity, you need to make 800 Euros a month. But so many only make 400 Euros,” Ilias said.

Nearly 500,000 Greeks have left the country during the course of the crisis and, with little opportunity, more continue to leave. They don’t see a future for themselves in Greece, which makes it impossible to develop the country or recover the economy.

“Young Greeks have given up on the country. They’re leaving. Greece is finished. There’s nothing to save,” Ilias said.

As with everything I hear from taxi drivers, I take it with a grain of salt. What they reveal is not always exactly truth, in the capital-T sense we pursue in journalism. But it is a kind of truth that can help reveal where a country is at.

Despite the rosy picture European and Greek officials are painting, the mood among at least some of the public is not nearly so optimistic.